HOW TO APPLY

FORMS

 

 

 

RESPONSIBILITIES

CATALOG

 

 

 

2006-2007 Speakers Bureau Catalog

The Company Car: Observations from the Wayback

Do you remember the Hamm's beer jingle? Wonder how it is that pumpkins can fly? Feeling ambivalent about the accordion, but suspect it's an instrument that never got its due? Curious about the evil of cucumbers? Hribal's novel The Company Car is the story of one Midwestern family caught in the changing landscape of the times. His reading and talk takes the Czabek family—and the audience—on a journey that is both hilarious and heartbreaking as they travel from the then-nascent suburbs of Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin and try, usually with comic results, to become farmers. Set against the background of the parents 50th wedding anniversary, this is a story about love and family, the American Dream, and how America has and hasn't changed over the last 50 years.

Simple People, Complex Lives

Hribal's fiction, whether it is humorous or serious—or, as is usually the case, a blend of both—often deals with small town and rural people who stumble as most of us do through the major events of their lives. Some of the characters you will meet include: Matty, a 63-year-old town clerk and farm wife embarking on a second marriage years after she's been widowed; Wally and Susan Czabek, two transplants to the farming life muddling through this metamorphosis; Rita Sabo and Janie, two women trying to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones; and Porter Atwood, a real estate developer whose guilty conscience continues to bother him after he covers up what might be a homicide committed in his subdivision. Hribal will read from his writing and then lead a discussion with the audience on topics of interest.

back